Surgical procedures, and in particular cosmetic surgery, can involve a significant investment for those undertaking such procedures. Cosmetic surgery can be very expensive and is often not covered by insurance plans. Additionally, many surgical procedures can require significant time for recovery and may be painful. There is also a certain amount of risk associated with any such procedure.
Before having cosmetic surgery (and making the investment) it is beneficial to have an idea as to the likely results. This can be done by showing the prospective patient photographs of prior patients having similar procedures or by having patients try on prosthetic devices of different sizes in their clothing and imagine the changes. However, such methods are less than ideal.
Some software applications have been developed that can be used to modify an image of the prospective patient. The known applications use stretching techniques to show changes to certain body parts. However, such stretching techniques can degrade the image. In particular, stretching techniques can magnify or shrink photograph attributes causing the resultant image to be very poor (and in some instances, cartoonish). Other known systems use on a 3D imaging system, which requires significant processing and memory resources and hardware.
The present invention is an improvement on such prior systems and methods.